‘Warehouse 13’ Season 4, Episode 3: ‘Personal Effects’ Recap

“Personal Effects,” the latest episdoe of Warehouse 13season 4, centers around a scramble for six misplaced artifacts from the late Walter Sykes (Anthony Michael Hall). Like any scavenger hunt, it is chaotic, busy, and quickly hops from one topic to the next.

A ping comes in to Artie (Saul Rubinek) about an odd occurrence – this time a woman who has all the symptoms of a spider bite from a rare spider but no bite marks – sending Pete (Eddie McClintock) and Myka (Joanne Kelly) packing for North Dakota. The artifact that “bit” the woman turns out to be a wooden token from Sykes’ old safe-house, where they hope to recover some of the artifact arsenal Sykes stored before his demise.

Unfortunately, they’ve been beaten to the punch by would-be thief Jessie Ashton (Brian J Smith) and when they follow the clues to a local pawn shop, it explodes in front of them. Miraculously, the shop owner survives the inferno and when the entire gang shows up he passes along the fact that he’d already sold five of the artifacts and permitted Jessie to keep one as well.

With six artifacts on the loose in one town, it takes six agents to set things right again. Pete and Myka are to follow up on Jessie and the pipe. Claudia (Allison Scagliotti) and Jinks (Aaron Ashmore) are sent after a pair of sunglasses, a birdcage, and a waffle iron. Meanwhile Artie takes Leena (Genelle Williams) on a rare field outing with him to track down a violin and a set of golf clubs.

The episode storylines simply rotate around the three groups, each time revealing a little bit more about the objects of their pursuit. For instance, Pete and Myka discover that the pipe allows its user the ability to create violent storms and that Jessie is now using the storms to destroy and rob banks. Then the focus shifts to Claudia and Jinks tracking down a pair of sunglasses that make whoever is wearing them invisible to the naked eye, with the nasty side effect that you become blinded after you take them off. Artie and Leena, meanwhile, head to a conservatory and bag Napoleon’s violin before it can shoot off any more fireballs and plunge the world as we know it into fiery chaos.

As the central story, Jessie’s storm pipe is the strongest. Jessie’s mother admits to Pete and Myka that Jessie has an anger problem and blames the world instead of taking responsibility for his own actions. What she fails to mention is that he also has a younger brother. A very sick younger brother whose medical bills have drained her finances and who will die unless he receives a heart transplant immediately.

Pete and Myka track Jessie to the roof where he’s kidnapped the hospital administrator in a last-ditch attempt to force her to save his brother’s life. Pete is too busy monologuing to shoot him when he has the chance so desperate measures must be taken before Jessie destroys the hospital. By this time Claudia and Jinks are done with their scavenger hunt list and they show up at the hospital with a plan.

Donning the invisibility sunglasses, Pete sneaks onto the roof while Myka tries to distract Jessie with a plea to stop the raging storm and accept that his brother needs a perfect heart match in order for the transplant to work. A rogue flying tarp gives Pete’s position away, however, and it takes a scuffle involving a touch of mortal peril before the situation calms back down. It is the calm before the final storm, however, because Jessie suddenly uses the pipe to kill himself so that his brother can have the one heart Jessie knows will be a perfect match.

The only other happenings worth noting are in regards to Claudia and Artie. After a few dropped hints throughout the episode Jinks finally realizes that every time he is physically hurt, Claudia experiences the same pain, though with no marks to show for it. Meanwhile, during the hunt for Bobby Jones’ golf clubs, Artie explodes with rage and nearly gives away his secret to a perplexed Leena. In the episode’s last moments she lets him off the hook, but encourages him to talk to someone before he implodes. Artie nods, then places a cryptic phone call, asking the person on the other end to hunt down the artifact knife that has been haunting his dreams since he used the astrolabe.